If you've been keeping up with Intel's upcoming Kaby Lake-based Core i7-7700K, you'll know that they run - well, rather freakin' hot. Way hotter than the previous 6700K, and normally double the temps of the 6700K on the current 7700K engineering samples that are being sent around to various tech press.

New work has been done on the 7700K with retail samples, and cooled by the Thermalright 6 cooler by AnandTech forum member 'RichUK'. Out of the box, the temperatures of the Core i7-7700K hit 60C under load, but when the 7700K was pushed to 5GHz and pushed to 100% load, the temperatures spiked at a mammoth 96C.

Even at 96C, the 7700K was stable at 5GHz with 1.34V coursing through its silicon, while 1.264V was used at a stable 4.7GHz (and hitting 83C) on a Corsair H110i cooler on quiet mode.

The Delidding Process

This is where the fun begins, as the Core i7-7700K was delidded and applied with CoolLaboratory Liquid Ultra thermal paste and then thrown under the Kraken X62 cooler and pushed to 5GHz (this time at 1.344V). The fan was set to 50%, while the pump operational in silent mode (65%) and there was a massive 30C reduction in temperatures - on average, the Core i7-7700K delidded was 26C cooler.

Before the 7700K was delidded, it was hitting 99C without a problem - but post-delid and it reaches 66C, a massive improvement.

We should see more results in the coming weeks, before Intel officially launches Kaby Lake at CES 2017 in early January.